Just when you thought the steam was about to go out of HTML5 - we have a logo. Now guess which company is first to jump on the logo bandwagon?

The W3C, the people responsible for HTML5 standards have a "proposed HTML5 logo" for you. The strange thing about this logo is that it looks like a badge of conformance but W3C claim that it isn't - so what is it? It seems to be a sort of rallying mark that you or your website can wear with pride. So the fact that it appears below signifies very little:

Some of the prose on the W3C website is a little over the top too:

It stands strong and true, resilient and universal as the markup you write. It shines as bright and as bold as the forward-thinking, dedicated web developers you are. It's the standard's standard, a pennant for progress. And it certainly doesn't use tables for layout.

We present an HTML5 logo.

I hope that really is tongue-in-cheek - apart from the bit about using tables for layout that is. It is licenced under the creative commons and the website also has a logo generator so you can obtain custom copies for your site - or T Shirt.

One company that is has some very definite plans for the logo is Microsoft - not the company you might think of first in connection with standards based logos. 

The logo will appear immediately on all Microsoft's HTML5 sites such as the IE 9 beta site and the Beauty of the Web  site.

Perhaps Microsoft now need a logo for Silverlight just to even up the playing field.

So wear your HTML5 logo with pride but remember when you encounter it that  it doesn't mean a thing.

More information

http://www.w3.org/html/logo/

Microsoft Interoperability Blog